One of the most bitterly fought and widely publicized elections in 19th century England occurred in Bedford in 1830. A comparative newcomer, Captain Frederick Polhill, challenged the 6th Duke of Bedford’s long-entrenched interest in the town. The events leading to this contest and the accounts of the polling afford an unexcelled look at electioneering in a class of boroughs aptly designated by historians as the “managed borough,” i.e., of a size too large to be controlled but small enough to be strongly influenced. The sharp decrease in the number of rotten boroughs in 1832 and the corresponding increase in the number of “managed” constituencies were to make electioneering problems such as those manifested at Bedford at this time relatively common in English politics until 1867.

In 1830 Bedford had a population of approximately 7,000 persons. Brookes’ Gazetteer reported that the town contained five churches, a county hospital, a lunatic asylum, a well-endowed public school, and about fifty almshouses. There was also “a house of industry,” or combined workhouse. A ￡10,000 yearly income from the Sir William Harpur Charity, plus ample gifts from the Russell and Whitbread families, made Bedford the most highly endowed town for its size in the United Kingdom. Government in the borough was vested in its corporation, consisting of a mayor, recorder, twelve aldermen, and thirteen common-councilmen. The mayor at this time was Sir William Long, described with some bias by his Oxford-trained predecessor as “a man of good natural sense,” but “quite uneducated,” and “not at all acquainted, not in the slightest degree of what is going on around him as to the general policy in the Country….” The recorder was the 6th Duke of Bedford. Although the mayor and corporation exercised considerable influence within the borough, their power was limited by one of the most liberal franchises in England. As one of the town’s ministers complained, “the franchise has been interpreted to extend to all Inhabitant householders, whether paying rates or not; so that Bedford is almost a potwalloping borough….”